BTCC, one of the longest-running and once part of the major three trading platforms in China, announced it's relaunching its exchange business with a plan to issue its own tokens.
The company said on Monday its new crypto exchange is now up and running with new trading pairs including bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ethereum and litecoin against the US dollar, as well as crypto-to-crypto trading options.
As part of the plan to revive its business, BTCC said it is introducing a point system by which users can be rewarded with points by signing up, completing ID verification and continuing trading. The points, according to the company's plan, can be fully converted into BTCC's own tokens, which will be further tradable on its platform.
However, the company has not revealed a concrete timeline for its token issuing but only said it will be launched in the next "a couple of months." It also indicates that the point's supply will have a limit but the company has not yet decided at the moment a hard cap or a ratio how the points can be transferred into its token in the future.
Further down the road, BTCC said it is planning to add more major cryptocurrency assets and it's also open to listing more ERC-2o based tokens.
BTCC's relaunch plan comes nearly a year after it suspended Chinese yuan trading against bitcoin in September 2017 following the People's Bank of China's clampdown on initial coin offerings and fiat-to-crypto exchange.
Though the firm shifted its headquarters to Hong Kong and maintained a crypto-to-crypto platform called DAX, it was also suspended in December. Yet meanwhile, BTCC's long-time rivals such as Huobi and OKCoin successfully pivoted to crypto-to-crypto platforms and rejoined the world's largest exchanges by trading volume.
In a previous interview with CoinDesk, BTCC's marketing director Tendai Musakwa said:
"When China banned all the bitcoin exchanges, that was a significant blow to us, because a significant part of our business came from our Chinese exchange."
BTCC's new way of rewarding traders also comes at a time when the trans-fee mining model has emerged among Chinese crypto exchanges, which reimburse users' transaction fees with a platform's own tokens – a model that appears to be somewhat similar to what BTCC will be taking, except that its tokens can only be redeemed at a later stage.
Commenting on that, the firm's vice president of international business Aaron Choi said since BTCC will have zero trading fee in the first three months from now on, its model is more like a giveaway instead of mining at the beginning.
Yet, Choi admits that trans-fee mining could be an option in the future for BTCC as the firm is yet to decide on the issuance model of its tokens. He told CoinDesk:
"The (trans-fee mining) model draws a lot of attention at the moment. ... But there's still a business risk so our management is reviewing this model how it can sustain in a long term. So giving away points for trading that can be converted into our token in the future is what we think makes sense for now."
Currently, BTCC has diversified its business to three main areas - the exchange, the mining pool and the Mobi wallet. The company was notably acquired by a Hong Kong-based blockchain capital firm in January of this year.
Just last week, CoinDesk also reported that the firm is planning to sell 49 percent of its equity in the mining pool business to a financial asset management firm based in Hong Kong.
Leigh Cuen contributed to reporting.
BTCC image via CoinDesk
The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.
